The Māori Party is planning to get tactical with the way it asks questions of the government in Parliament and is hoping the Green Party will help.
Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Photo: RNZ / Te Aniwa Hurihanganui
With two MPs, the Māori Party gets four supplementary questions a week and only one primary question every four sitting days.
The party has already swapped some spare questions with ACT, so it could use them at a later date when it wanted to put the government to task.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the arrangement with ACT was "very much a one-off".
"Since then we have been fortunate to have an agreement with the Greens and they'll cast our proxy votes, we'll also have some discussion on working with them and co-operating on supplementary questions too," she said.
Ngarewa-Packer said the Māori Party and the Greens already had a lot in common.
"I think policy-wise and philosophically we are actually are quite aligned which is why we have been able to have some discussions on how we can work together," she said.
She and fellow co-leader Rawiri Waititi would need to be tactical with how they participated in the House and made their voices heard, she said.
"It is about maths and looking at how we can pull off and have impact with what little that we have to use in the House at the moment."
She said the party would also be looking to bounce questions off other parties' primary questions who have similar values, like the Greens and Labour.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said on top of offering to cast the Māori Party's proxy vote when they could not be in the chamber, the Greens were open to the two parties helping each other out in practical ways.
"In saying that, with our larger, re-energised caucus, it is likely we will use our supplementary questions each week to progress and push for action on climate change and inequality.
"Any decision to pass supplementary questions to another political party would need to be discussed with our Caucus first," she said.
